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(Abraham Ribicoff - Secretary of Health, Education And Welfare in 1961 - also Hand Holder, Paranoia Assuager, Debunker)

In 1961, JFK introduced a bill that would provide medical assistance to the Aged. It later became known as Medicare and would later pass in 1965 during the Johnson Administration. As is always the case, the mere mention of anything connection with a government aid program where Healthcare is concerned is immediately tossed into the realm of Socialized Medicine. And in 1961 it was no different.

Newly appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Abraham Ribioff was confronted by a dizzying array of skepticism from the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries who instantly labeled any kind of Healthcare reform as Socialized Medicine. As is evidenced by this exchange between Ribicoff and Meet The Press co-founder Lawrence Spivak:

Lawrence Spivak: “ Mister Secretary, as you know the AMA and others have charged that the Medical Bill for the Aged under Social Security is an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine. Now if you thought there was a chance that the bill might be an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine, would you still be for it?”

Abraham Ribicoff: “ Well, it’s not an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine, I’m for the bill.

Spivak: “No, I’m asking if you thought that it was an opening wedge . . .

Ribicoff: “I would be against it . . .I would be against the bill if it were Socialized Medicine. . . “

Spivak: “If it opened the door to Socialized Medicine?”

Ribicoff: “It doesn’t open the door to Socialized Medicine”

Spivak: “Would you tell us what makes you so sure that it doesn’t?”

Ribicoff: “Because you and I and every other American, Mister Spivak has the right to choose his own doctor. There is nothing in this bill that has anything to do with doctors. This bill takes care of the health needs to the people of America, our aged over sixty-five, and basically takes care of their hospital bills, their nursing home bills and their visits to the home for home care. The bill specifically provides that each and every American has the right to choose his own doctor and his own hospital.”

The bill wound up being defeated, owing to a Congress recess and an overheated paranoia campaign (sound familiar?). But the Medicare Bill did finally pass in 1965.

The eerie sense of Deja-vu is everywhere.

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(Sargent Shriver and Peace Corps Volunteers - an abundance of optimism)

The Peace Corps came about as the result of The New Frontier - the brainchild of the Kennedy administration. In 1961 a program was set up to get Americas youth involved in the world by going overseas to help set up schools, libraries, infrastructure - anything to be of service where it was needed. A nice idea, and one which captured the imaginations of thousands of young adults wanting to be part of the optimistic change that was so prevalent in the 1960s.

R. Sargent Shriver was given the task of setting the agency up. He was its first architect. He was also given the task of having to explain just what it was he planned on doing. And so he went on the talk show circuit to lay out in plain terms, just what the Peace was and what it wasn't.One of those talk shows was CBS News' Capitol Cloakroom from October 1961.

Nancy Hanschman (CBS News): “Are your Peace Corps men expected to proselytize to Democracy in any way at all? What is the briefing you give them on this?

Sargent Shriver: “ Well we give them a lot of instruction in American history and government and theory in government and political life and we expect that when they’re asked questions by the people in their foreign country they’ll be able to give them intelligent, informed answers. We don’t go out there and tell them ‘now here is Course Number 101 in American Government – sell this, if you can to the people in the Philippines.’ They’re not out there as traveling salesman, they’re not out there to get up on a soapbox and give a speech. But they are supposed to be out there as well informed, intelligent Americans, able to respond to questions, and even to tough questions from people in foreign countries.”

The Peace Corps became a great success and did a lot to improve our somewhat sagging reputation throughout the world.

And considering the number of "yanqui go home" placards from demonstrations around the world that graced most newspaper front pages and nightly newscasts through the 1950s, that was a good thing.

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(Willy Brandt, 1961 - You'd chain smoke too if you had the Russian Army staring at you all day)

Since next week signals twenty years since the infamous Berlin Wall came down, I thought I would post a few items dealing with Germany during the Post-War years. Talk of reunification had been going on since 1946, with the Russians vehemently opposed to it at every opportunity. There had been showdowns between east and west at various times all the way up to November 9, 1989. Always Berlin was perceived as the flash point in any heating up of the Cold War and life in Berlin was regarded by many as life under a heated microscope.

But before August of 1961 there was no wall separating the two Berlins. Only miles of barbed wire fence and checkpoints and troops.

Willy Brandt had the dubious distinction of being Mayor of West Berlin during this time. It was certainly no easy task.

On March 12, 1961, Brandt sat down to a panel interview on Meet The Press and asked about the situation as it currently was in Berlin.

Stewart Hensely (UPI): “Mister Mayor, Soviet Premier Khruschev a few weeks ago sent a communication to Chancellor Adenauer which he restated the demands on Berlin and Germany. This came after a period of relative quiet. Do you anticipate that this Spring or this Summer we’re going to see another increase in pressure on Berlin to bring a crisis as we had in ’58 and ’59?”

Brandt: “It’s hard of course to predict what will happen, but personally I’m inclined to believe that we will not have a new Berlin crisis within the next few months. But the memorandum indicates that new pressure might come sometime later this year.”

Prophetic words from Brandt, since less than five months later the Russians constructed a vast and inescapable wall, dividing the two Berlins. Frequently referred to as "The Wall of Shame", it stood in mute testimony to just how tenuous peace was. And it stood there for 28 more years.

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(In 1961, one of the culprits looked like this)

The eternal trade deficit. Buying imports, manufacturing and outsourcing overseas, imports flooding the market, cheap labor, regulations, de-regulation, unions.

In 1961 it was the beginnings of The Common Market. In 2009 it's the European Union. Either one, it's been with us for longer than anyone cares to remember.

And in November 1961, CBS Radio tried to tackle the issue on their Sunday talk program Leading Question.

Guests were Oscar Strackbein and Charles P. Taft, who didn't agree on very much. Even the number of unemployed there were.

Oscar Strackbein: “Let me point out that the problem is not merely that of how many people lose their jobs because of import competition, it is also a question of who is not being employed because of imports. We have over a million new workers coming on the labor market every year. Not to mention a degree of unemployment that is constantly rising after each recession. After we’ve come out of each recession the last ten years we have been left at the peak of prosperity with a higher number of unemployed than before. So today we have what . . five and a half million unemployed . . “

Charles P. Taft: “Four million the last time.”

Strackbein: “Now, I say.”

Taft: “I’m talking about the last figures. Day before yesterday – four million”.

Strackbein: “All right. Then we have made some headway.”

2009 things seem no different . . except the numbers.

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(C. Douglas Dillon - bringing the date to the prom)

With the recent news of Sec. of State Clinton's defense pact with Colombia, I was thinking about how our foreign policy has been something of a hit-and-miss situation with regards to Latin America in recent years.

Historically, Latin America has always seemed like the girlfriend you had under the bleachers but never took to the prom (h/t Susie!) - someone you needed in a pinch, but never took very seriously. We had the Good Neighbor Policy during World War 2 and the Alliance for Progress during the Cold War. Both overtures were made out of fear. Certainly fear the Axis would establish a beach head during World War 2 and definitely a fear of Cuba's close association with the Soviet Union during the Cold War would lead to a communist sweep of the Southern Hemisphere.

We have usually always pledged undying love and support but only in crisis - not on the day-to-day. Because of that, I don't think the average American really knows anything about the vast expanse of land just south of us - nothing about the people, the culture, the politics. We know all about the drugs, immigration and NAFTA - but nothing of the inner-workings of a continent so close to us. And that is ultimately our problem.

So, in an effort to put some historic perspective on what we do overseas - not only in Latin America but Africa and the rest of the world, I'm going to regularly include some of our Foreign Policy issues of the past so hopefully some light can be shed on what we need to do if we're planning on staying the super-power we so much like being. On top of that, ignorance of your culture and the world not only isn't cool - it's dangerous.

Here is a Press conference from August 22, 1961 featuring Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, giving an outline of the events at the Punta del Este Conference in Uruguay.

C.Douglas Dillon: “No matter how good their intentions, no matter how much national effort is brought to bear upon their enormous problems, the leaders of Latin America cannot translate their ambitious plans and dreams for their peoples into reality without financial and technical assistance from the United States. And on the long term basis, which is indispensable to sound programming. We must recognize the questions about the future of the Alliance for Progress are not our prerogative alone. They’re also being asked in Latin America about us, about our intentions, about our capacity to help make The Alliance for Progress a success. These questions were raised in open meeting at Punta del Este by the representative of the Castro regime. Who boasted that only their monolithic form of statism could produce progress."

The fear just doesn't stop, and it didn't stop in 1961. Before he was governor, Ronald Reagan was busy stirring up fears of Socialized Medicine, terrifying people into believing any sort of Public Health Care was a direct product of communism and government meddling.

And so, when the Medicare debate began during its first incarnation in 1961 (the bill was defeated owing to just these scare tactics and the influence of the Dixiecrats - the precursor to our Blue Dogs), people like Ronald Reagan flocked to the cause of the Insurance lobby, big Pharma and the AMA with the sole intent of scaring the living crap out of every human being within the United States.

And so the fear in 1961, as now is a misguided attempt at keeping the status quo pure by stamping out any thought an alternative may exist.

Ain't it all grand?

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("Um . . I know this is a bad time but . . . .you're not covered.")

Note: This is a re-post from June.

The endless debate on Health Care. Every time the subject is brought up, screams of "Socialized Medicine" pop up - and somewhere, the ones doing the loudest screaming appear to come from the American Medical Association. Curious, that.

Case in point - this rather historic debate between Walter Reuther (yes, that Walter Reuther) and Dr. Edward R. Annis from the AMA from February 23, 1961. The gist of the debate centered around the Kerr-Mills bill, which had been introduced as an alternative health care plan.

Reuther: “And what bothers me, instead of being against all these things, instead of calling everything socialism, why don’t you sit down with other people and see if we can’t together find a practical mechanism?”

Annis: “Mister Reuther. . . .

Reuther: “Now the Kerr bill will not do the job, because only nine states come under the Kerr Bill. In the state of Kentucky they only provide, under the Kerr bill, three days of hospitalization. Now what happens at the end of that? Well, the person is either thrown on the indignity of the Public Charity or they’re pushed off to some poor farm. This is 1961. I think that’s not a rational sensible way to meet this problem."

The case for some kind of universal Health Care has been going on since somewhere after the Stone Age. Reuther, a staunch union man, makes the case for Universal Health Care. While Annis, a man with somewhat suspicious motives, is adamantly against it. Although he doesn't come right out and say as much, his argument is peppered with the buzzword "Socialized Medicine" and it's clear where his loyalties lie.

Needless to say, he was no supporter of Medicare when it came to light in 1964 and became law in 1965. He was also no supporter of the warning on cigarette packs saying it would be bad for business if people stopped smoking. But that's another story.

There is an interesting postscript at the end of this broadcast. CBS began a series of "Letters To CBS" and Smith reads some of the letters that poured in after the first hour of the debate from two weeks earlier. One writer, a doctor who chose to remain anonymous, supplied a copy of a letter allegedly circulated by the AMA to doctors, urging letters of condemnation of CBS and the concept of Universal Health Care as a step towards Socialism.

Even then, the fear card was being played for all it was worth.

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(Congress in 1961 - astute and eloquent in their hypocrisy)

I just ran across this Sunday Interview show from September of 1961, part of the CBS Radio series "Leading Question" - it deals with the death of The Federal Aid to Education Bill, introduced during the 87th Congress in the early months of 1961.

Why is this important? Because Federal Aid to Education was high on the agenda of the Kennedy Administration during his first few months in office, much like the Health Care Bill is to the Obama Administration is now.

How the Federal Education bill died was due to a lot of political hypocrisy and attachments. It also had something to do with a Summer Recess where factions against the bills passing went into overtime poisoning the waters, so that when Congress reconvened, the bill was dead in the water with no hopes of revival.

In this interview - conducted by Bill Downs of CBS News, Congressmen John Brademas (D-Indiana) and Charles Goodell (R-New York), both explained what went into killing the bill and how it happened.

Continue reading »

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(Handed a rather overflowing plate in 1961)

With all the recent reflection on Presidential 100 days and crisis management, I was reminded just how much the Kennedy Administration had been handed in the area of Foreign policy and crisis management in their first 100 days.

Senator J. William Fulbright was Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, overseeing a host of hotspots, including the Congo, Berlin, Laos (in fact the whole Southeast Asia region) and Cuba. Ironically, five days before this Meet The Press was recorded, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion took place - a bungled attempt at toppling the Castro regime on the part of the CIA causing a big black eye in our policy towards Latin America in general.

The deck was pretty stacked and there was no shortage of fires to put out. Fulbright was a big advocate of education and foreign assistance as a means of overcoming the increasing Communist influence in these regions. He was no advocate of armed conflict, particularly in SouthEast Asia, citing the French excursion and terrain as reasons to avoid it. His solution to funding the campaign of education and Foreign Aid was probably tainted by those two most lethal words in politics, "higher taxes".

This Meet The Press, from April 30, 1961 features Fulbright answering a battery of questions from Lawrence Spivak and Company.

Lively.

In what I hope will be a series of "First Hundred Days", I'm starting off with an evaluation NBC Radio did on May 1, 1961 regarding the first hundred days of the Kennedy Administration. This is excerpted from an original 1-hour broadcast, but the essential flavor is there. And so are the parallels between the first days of the JFK White House and the Obama White House.